FTC vs Spammers 268
binaryDigit writes "The San Jose Mercury News has an article on the FTC getting ready to take action on an (alleged) spammer. 'The Federal Trade Commission said today that after receiving about 46,000 complaints it had asked a federal judge to halt the operation.' Too bad it took 46000 complaints to prompt some action, but at least some action is being taken. The FTC will focus on the "deception" involved (innocent and misleading subject lines, bogus (but real) from/reply to addresses, etc)."
Government in action (Score:5, Funny)
after receiving about 46,000 complaints
You've got to wonder why they didn't wait for 100,000.Re:Government in action (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Government in action (Score:2)
Insightful? Who was enlightened?
They did... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Government in action (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Government in action (Score:2)
I understand that it was a slow day so after counting them up that day, they still had time left to file a legal case.
They never were able to count the volume in earlier days.
I tend to suspect that this is the volume of spam messages a mid sized ISP (between 1 and 10 thousand subscribers) sees in the average hour.
I personally receive between 80 and 200 messages a day that popfile identifi
Re:Government in action (Score:5, Funny)
Thank God they didn't!
I don't think I could have typed another 54,000.About time (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets see if it actually helps deter them or if it just forces them to take different paths to annoying us further...
-DaedalusHKX
It's a shame (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's a shame (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a shame (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's a shame (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's a shame (Score:2, Insightful)
Many people are in the same line of thought I have noticed, they surely wouldn't want it happening to them, but to someone they don't like it's completly acceptable. That's why our justice system is struggling, there are many too many people who see it that way.
Re:It's a shame (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course no one wants it to happen to them. It wouldn't be a punishment otherwise.
No one wants to be imprisoned, either, but it is PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE for the government to imprison people that have broken the law. Prison is a form of punishment -- you're not there to get rewarded with cookies.
Re:It's a shame (Score:2)
guess not.
Re:It's a shame (Score:2, Funny)
I missed it, I was looking for my stapler. Have you seen it? It's red.
Re:It's a shame (Score:2)
Re:It's a shame (Score:5, Funny)
>
> It's a shame that you think state sanctioned torture is acceptable! Why the hell would you endorse rape?!
Whoa, wait a minute there. This is spammer ass we're talking about getting pounded.
That's not rape. Bestiality, sure, but not human-on-human nonconsensual sex.
Besides, the fact that he's the "married but lonely" spammer... the irony is positively delicious. Wait'll he finds out just how "lonely" Guido's been, especially having been locked away from his wife for six years, with his only email contacts with the outside world have been thousands of spams telling him about all that h0t 4ss cr4v1ng h4rd d1ck1ng!
Mr. Westby, while you serve your time, may you be buggered repeatedly (if you don't want Guido's unsolicited dickings every night, just OPT OUT!), may you contract AIDS from said buggerings (if you wanted to be protected from viruses, you should have bought a pirated copy of NORTON SYSTEMWORKS 2003 from George Allen Moore!), may the disease cripple and sicken you for years (you could have taken EFFECTIVE HERBAL REMEDIES to prevent this!), and may you finally die after a protracted but ultimately futile battle with pneumonia.
May the last thing you hear be the echoing of your raspy breath against the cold steel walls, may the last thing you smell be the latex on the gloves of the medic who intubates you, and may the last thing you taste be your own blood-tinged sputum, and may every other spammer on the face of the earth be watching, live, via webcam.
Yes, Mr. Westby, you and your kind are that hated.
FTC - you rule. Sometimes it's necessary to put a few heads on pikes, "pour encourager les autres." Please. MORE HEADS. MORE PIKES.
Re:It's a shame (Score:2)
Re:Unlikely (Score:3, Funny)
I think it would be more like this: "I don't give a flying fuck what you're in here for.. give me your Cocktail FRUIT!
Lonely (Score:5, Funny)
Hopefully Mr. Westby will heretofore be "Lonely with Guido" in a minimum security facility for at least a few years.
We can only hope.
Please God (Score:3, Interesting)
If it is this Brian D
Re:Lonely (Score:2)
Unwanted solicitation (Score:3, Interesting)
$$$ MAKE MONEY FAST $$$ (Score:2)
Yeah, whatever.
Democracy at work (Score:2)
46000 (Score:2, Insightful)
46000, and then they decide to take action... that's awful.
Re:46000 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:46000 (Score:2)
Mmmm, if it takes tens of thousands of complaints to take action on one spammer...
Given the overall population growth on Earth and the amount of spammers, we'll reach equilibrium on the year 7&J!xO"^Ks f#
NO CARRIER
Re:46000 (Score:2)
I would say the gov't is most certainly doing its job.
Re:46000 (Score:2)
Still, it is good to see that action is taken!
Re:46000 (Score:2)
Perhaps the lesson here is to send all spam to the FTC, and keep sending everything you receive until their mail servers explode.
Re:46000 (Score:2)
In theory this could do good to get the US spammers, but until something is done on a global / mail server level.
Re:46000 (Score:2)
scripsit Alan:
Pity about Bush sinking the International Criminal Court... That might have been useful.
Obligatory Bayesian Filtering Plug (Score:5, Informative)
If you're not already doing it, give it a go in one of its many forms.
I've been using POPFile [sourceforge.net] for ages and it works a treat.
Spamassassin and recent false-negatives (Score:4, Interesting)
However, there have been a slew of recent spams that have made it through. The subject lines are simple things such as "Hello". This is also the same subject line of ALL of my mother's emails; after all, that's how she answers the phone. The content is nothing more than an image tag pointing to a screenshot of the ad. Spamassassin doesn't complain since there is not enough wrong with the email - they usually score around 1 or 2 (which is way too low to set a threshold, 5 is reasonable). I could alter the scoring rules, but that would create way too many false positives since many emails are just links to political cartoons and the like.
I don't think bayesian filtering would help the problem.
I keep forwarding them to uce@ftc.gov. Maybe I'll submit the 46,000th entry and win a prize!
Re:Spamassassin and recent false-negatives (Score:5, Informative)
The Bayes filter would decide that since it had a short subject line, it wasn't coming from someone you know (names on whitelist are always non-spam), and it contains IMG SRC but no other POSITIVE hits, it's would score VERY likely spam on a properly trained filter.
The only problem you may have is if your mother regularly sends you pictures of her dog with a subject line like Here.
HTML email by itself scores very high on probability for spam, because very few people besides spammers use it. Those people are generally vetted by their other content.
Re:Spamassassin and recent false-negatives (Score:2)
Re:Spamassassin and recent false-negatives (Score:2)
"hey dude, here's that url you wanted
http://whatever.porn.site
good, huh?
>you said:
>hey man, where can I get those photos?"
-yourname
"
Or, spam that has nothing but a URL. That's it. Just a URL.
Damn spammers.
Also get free POP3 Hotmail access for spam free HM (Score:4, Interesting)
Result? In Outlook, you get all your POP3 accounts and Hotmail, delivered into one inbox with no spam. Never need to manually check Hotmail etc. And with a hotsync, it all goes into my Palm Tungsten T. Sweet. And for the un-1337, POPFile is easy to setup and use on Wind0z3 b0x3n :)
One more thing... DISABLE ANTIVIRUS E-MAIL SCANNING before you install POPFile. Don't re-ename the scanning software until after everything is talking to everything else perfectly.
Re:Also get free POP3 Hotmail... in Linux (Score:2)
I have gotten some messages that it fails to retrieve and break retrieval until that message is deleted either in OE or the Hotmail interface
Maybe... (Score:4, Funny)
Obligatory (Score:2)
The worst of the worst. (Score:4, Interesting)
All spammers are bad, but they gotta start with the worst in these cases. It's true that a deceptive email subject line bringing you to a porn site is alot worse than someone trying to sell you a pair of shoes (to parents anyway).
So even if it's not everything, it's a step in the right direction, I am happy
Re:The worst of the worst. (Score:2)
Starting with the worst cases makes it easier to establish a strong precedent in spam cases. If they started with the naive flower shop that sent a mailing to a questionable mailing list...they would get sympathy from the jury for the defendent.
The same is true with getting 46,000 emails to support a particular case...since it shows massive disgust with spammers.
Re:The worst of the worst. (Score:3, Insightful)
Analogy: you've got a few illegal MP3s on your HD, and you see the RIAA cracking down on those with thousands of MP3s... You're not worried, they've got bigger fish to fry. But if they simultaneously go after the little guys too, you'll think, "that could have been me!" and be scared. More so at least
Brian D. Westby of St. Louis (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Brian D. Westby of St. Louis (Score:2)
How did the complaints come in? (Score:4, Informative)
uce@ftc.gov (Score:2)
Why post a question we all know the answer to?
For one thing, not all of us know the answer to.
For another thing, spambots spidering Slashdot will pick up a highly moderated post and add uce@ftc.gov to their spam lists.
The FTC? What a Joke... (Score:5, Interesting)
From credit to business mergers to privacy, and, yes, spam, the FTC seems to always screw up something. (While the companies were busy forgetting due diligence, you can bet the FTC was, too...)
They'll likely compile a list of all the email addresses that were spammed to and make them available to spammers.
Now that's my government working for me!
justen
Re:The FTC? What a Joke... (Score:3, Informative)
FTC privacy regulations are being accused of being too hard to follow for website operators! Aren't Slashfolk for _more_ privacy?
FTC apparently is doing a pretty good job overall..
Excerpts from recent Wall Street Journal article:
(April 4th 2003 by John Wilke)
"Devout Reaganite Becomes
An Unlikely Enforcer at FTC"
"Indeed, of the few federal regulatory agencies that really matter, his stands out because it's functioning vigorously: The Federal Communications Commission is nearly paralyzed, with
Bogus Unsubscribe addresses... (Score:5, Funny)
Y'know, it's funny how while laws might require them to have an address to contact to become unsubscribed from the list, I'm wondering where the enforcement is. Or, where they're required to have a working address?
Working addresses (Score:2)
Re:Bogus Unsubscribe addresses... (Score:5, Funny)
Legislation on remove requests is just stupid, there are too many ways around it. Better legislation would simply require that all penis enlargment messages be flagged as such in the headers so users could filter it, with stiff penalties for violators.
Deceptive Subject Lines?? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh cmon, these people are so picky. What sort of shut-in do you have to be to consider sex with dogs and horses "sexually explicit"?
Sheesh.
It's All Just Cost Of Doing Business (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as they are hit with simple fines or only shut down temporarily, or only forced to change their tactics, they'll keep going. They make too much money to stop.
They'll only stop when sending spam costs more than their rewards. When they are fined enough or sued for enough that they lose their expensive new houses and other trappings of luxery, then they'll think about it.
In the meantime, don't expect the FTC or anyone from the Bush administration to do anything more than slap the hand of anyone making a good deal of money.
Re:It's All Just Cost Of Doing Business (Score:2)
Kjella
Re:It's All Just Cost Of Doing Business (Score:2)
I've gotten spam routed through open relays in .mil space.
If a .mil server falls over because its disk spool is filled with bounces, I'd certainly hope that qualifies for some hard time. Double if we're at war when it happens.
Who was the other person? (Score:4, Funny)
Okay, so my bash script was responsible for 32,767 of those, who was the other guy?
maybe this is a bad thing? (Score:3, Funny)
Response time (Score:2)
Cut them some slack, OK? Even Government bureaucrats have to use the can now and then.
Reducing Network Traffic? (Score:4, Insightful)
46,000 complaints (Score:4, Funny)
Hey Malda, why didn't you convert your patent encumbered gifs to png?
Forward your spam to the FTC (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Forward your spam to the FTC (Score:2)
Does the FTC want my archive? I'll send the last few months worth if it is at all appreciated.
Re:Forward your spam to the FTC (Score:4, Interesting)
Side note - I had to install Real Player on my work machine the other day (don't ask), and that address was already on their mailing list. So were all my backup addresses: abuse@site, webmaster@site, postmaster@site, root@site, abuse@aol.com, abuse@hotmail.com. Site is whatever site I'm visiting.
If we spam the FTC... (Score:3, Insightful)
actual ftc site (Score:5, Informative)
For the love of..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it possibly for stories to be posted without someone's cynical or uninformed opinion? Yes, I realize this is Slashdot but it is beyond annoying at this point. How does the submitter know what the relevance of the number of complaints is? Maybe the FTC has some minimum number of people that must complain before they take action and many of the complaints were from the same person.
Limits (Score:3, Interesting)
The FTC taking action against Microsoft or Disney because 100 people sent email to the FTC might sound funny, but you wouldn't be laughing when your or a friend's small buisness got shut down because some joker thought it would be funny or a neighbor was annoyed and a single
I found someone who actually reads spam (Score:5, Funny)
Our internal email in our office scans incoming and outgoing mail for viruses, spam, etc. Some spam slips through. In this case it was one of the numerous increase penile length spams.
When an email that is sent out and is blocked for some reason we are automatically notified. In this case someone forwarded the penile lotion lengther spam back to his home account so presumably he could read it later at home and perhaps try the product. This time it actually caught the spam going out when he tried forwarding it.
This "someone" was the president of our company. So far he hasn't asked us why the email he forwarded didn't go through. Of course we'll know if he eventually got it to go through when he starts wearing a loin cloth to work.
It's funny that (Score:2, Funny)
Back in the land of reality this spammer should burn in hell
Only 46,000?! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Only 46,000?! (Score:2)
Excellent (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, that'll work.
As much as spammer's suck (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand, I'd be more than happy to see him fined up the wazoo and opened up to lawsuits from victims.
Re:As much as spammer's suck (Score:2)
Re:As much as spammer's suck (Score:2, Interesting)
Not to defend spammers, but...
I think that if something like that really happens, the spammer is not responsible for you getting fired. The manager who fired you is responsible. His crime is stupidity. The company's profits will suffer as a result of keeping the stupid person around, wh
The FTC now says they can regulate spam (Score:5, Interesting)
- Because the "Married But Lonely" spam forges the identity of the sender, it is
unclear whether Westby sends the spam himself or whether he employs someone else
to send it. Even if he does hire someone to send the spam, he is still liable
for these practices. Westby is liable for deceptive or unfair practices he engages
in himself or for those of his employees or agents who are acting on his behalf.
Under the FTC Act, a principal is liable for misrepresentations made by agents
with actual or apparent authority to make such representations, regardless of
any unsuccessful efforts by the principal to prevent such misrepresentations.
- See Southwest Sunsites, Inc. v. FTC, 785 F.2d 1431, 1438-39 (9th Cir. 1986);
FTC v. Skybiz.com, Inc., 2001 WL 1673645, at *9 (N.D. Okla. Aug. 31, 2001);
FTC v. Five-Star Auto Club, Inc., 97 F. Supp. 2d 502, 527 (S.D.N.Y. 2000).
It is inappropriate for a principal to "`reap the fruits from their [agents']
acts and doings without incurring such liabilities as attach thereto."' Skybiz.com,
2001 WL 1673645, at *9 (quoting Goodman v. FTC, 244 F.2d 584, 591-92 (9th
Cir. 1957)).
Note what the FTC is saying. They don't even have to prove that the business being advertised by spam paid the spammer. If someone benefitted from the spam, the beneficiary is liable.If a court agrees, as is likely, you don't sue spammers any more. You go after the deep pocket - the business being advertised. This is going to bring spamming on behalf of legitimate businesses to a screeching halt.
Enlargment, Enhancement, Enforcement (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps... But 90% of the shit these guys peddle is hardly legitimate.
Re:The FTC now says they can regulate spam (Score:2, Interesting)
First, "This is going to bring spamming on behalf of legitimate businesses..." is a nonsensical statement. Any business that deliberately uses spamming, either from their own computers of from a 'contracted ethikul bizzniss' is not a 'legitimate company'.
Second, this is potentially dangerous, as it could possibly open up business to liability when someone spams using their name in a deliberate attempt to defame the company (called a 'joe-job'). This has happened before, and I don't like the
Re:The FTC now says they can regulate spam (Score:2)
Anyway, gist of it is: legitimate companies don't send spam, so "legitimate companies who use spamming" is a nonsensical term and I commented on the potential danger of a legitimate company being defamed by a spammer and then being investigated by the FTC as a result.
How about auotmating the process? (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder how many orders to cease operations will this cause
--
Lets make spam the new game of Russian Rollete.
New SPAMmer to abuse (Score:3, Informative)
Here is the raw output for domain n0hastlem0rtgage.com:
Organization:
none
Mike Stone
12345 Stone rd
Stoneville, CA 92504
US
Phone: 916.123.4567
Email: vialead@yahoo.com
Amazingly enough, his yahoo account has already been terminated.
Re:New SPAMmer to abuse (Score:2)
In fact, searching zip code 92504 for cities using this tool they provide [usps.com] reveals the following data for zip 92504:
92504 is associated with the following Cities/Towns:
RIVERSIDE CA ACCEPTABLE (DEFAULT) STANDARD
CASA BLANCA CA NOT ACCEPTABLE - USE RIVERSIDE STANDARD
HARDMAN CENTER CA NOT ACCEPTABLE - USE RIVERSIDE STANDARD
WOODCREST CA NOT ACCEPTABLE - USE RIVERSIDE STANDARD
Furthermore, 916 area code i
quit yer bitchin! (Score:2, Interesting)
How many of us actually sent an email to the ftc complaining about spam? I bet most of the people bitching about this taking so long never formally complained.
The fact is, no government can respond to every complaint. I hardly hear anyone saying
Solution: Spam the FTC! (Score:4, Interesting)
Send your spam to *.GOV - heh.
Re:Solution: Spam the FTC! (Score:3, Insightful)
Lucky Spam Recipients.... (Score:2, Funny)
Here at home, I usually average about 74,000 complaints before I get any action. *sigh*
Consider the 46000 complaint question (Score:4, Interesting)
Now consider that at that ratio, you would basically need 11,500 of me to do this per week for four weeks. Seeing as it's more likely that the UCE addr4esws provided is not well known, it's more likely that it took a couple of months to amass that many spam complaints regarding this.
I did not unsubscribe! (Score:2)
Shouldn't they file when they get ONE complaint? (Score:2)
Read the article (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Keep the government out of this! (Score:5, Funny)
Not yet is right -- what if those spammers are trying to sell Weapons of Ass Destruction [searchextreme.com]?
Re:Keep the government out of this! (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like a true spammer.
The government has a long history of regulating how a business advertises. Perhaps you long for the day when a business could completely lie in its advertising, but I don't.
Re:Keep the government out of this! (Score:2)
First they came for the crackers, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a cracker.
Then they came for the spammers, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a spammer.
Then they came for the pump-and-dump scammers on the message boards, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a scammer.
Hmmm... nah.
Re:Keep the government out of this! (Score:2)
The "free speach" argument is a bogus bullshit line pulled out by just about every spammer. The First Amendment does not grant anyone a right to appropriate the private resources of other people as an advertising medium.
Spammers are criminals. The very act
Re:bogus but... (Score:2, Informative)
I think that the author means that the "From" address was a real, working email address. It just didn't happen to belong to the spammer. I believe this is called getting "Joe-Jobbed".
Re:bogus but... (Score:2)
Joe-jobbery includes deliberately putting a person's e-mail address in the 'from' header so that they will be inundated with bounces and complaints as well as spamming out 'advertisements' for a website in an attempt to make that particular website look bad.
I had someone joe-job me recently (he did it to people who had posted in a particular newsgroup). That was a deliberate act, and if I ever find him,